I wasn’t sure she’d answer. Her internal war between the need to talk and her desire to stay silent was evident in her expression.
I wanted to win. I always did.
I waited…
And waited…
“Nicole.” She sounded exasperated. “My name is Nicole.”
I released the air in my lungs. Maybe she hadn’t shared her last name, but I was relieved that she’d said something, because I was certain she still thought I was a complete tosser for reading her texts.
“Damian.” I hadn’t even thought about the wisdom of using my real name, which was a little concerning since I made it a point to never do anything impulsively.
Luckily, I didn’t see any obvious signs that my name meant anything to her.
“I’m not sure I really want to talk about the Lancaster disaster,” she said. “And talking about my failures with a man I don’t know, and who seems to love making fun of me, would be a pretty bad choice of people to discuss my disappointment with, don’t you think?”
I frowned. “I never made fun of you, Nicole. If you were under any impression that I was insincere, you’re wrong.” What kind of asshole would do something like that to her? “If I didn’t honestly want to listen, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Her voice had been reluctant, but I could tell she really did want to talk to someone, and I really wanted to be that confidant right now. Especially if the story had anything to do with Lancaster International. “Like I said, I’m a stranger. Shoot. I’m not about to judge.”
I could feel the jet lifting off, but I ignored it. I was too eager to hear what Nicole had to say, and being in an aircraft was like a second home to me.
She let out a sigh of submission, and I wanted to celebrate because I knew that sound meant she was going to talk, whether it seemed like a wise decision to her or not.
I calculated that my best course of action was to stay silent until she spoke, which she eventually did.
“My mom passed away from cancer a year ago. Her company…my company now…was her baby. She built Ashworth Crisis Management from the ground up, and she was really, really good at it. I came to London to pitch our services to Lancaster International. I had no idea that the owner is some kind of man-whore, and that I’d only find that out a couple of minutes before my presentation. Because I wasn’t prepared for some real-time scandal to happen, I completely blew it. I froze instead of changing things up to address the imminent problem they were facing.”
I didn’t speak. I waited for her to go on. I sensed that she needed to keep venting, and I was a very willing audience.
“I bombed my presentation in front of the Lancaster executives. I just…choked. I’m a planner. I’m not good at just…winging things. I was all over the place, and I never got to really tell them what we could do for them in their current situation.”
She looked so forlorn that it made my damn chest ache. I could relate to what had happened to her. I wasn’t exactly Mr. Spontaneous. I was a meticulous planner, too. “Something came up suddenly that you weren’t prepared to handle at that meeting, Nicole. It’s not your fault.”
She shook her head. “I doubt it’s ever going to come naturally to me. I went to school to become a corporate attorney, and I was a damn good one. Sure, I had to talk to executives, but it was normally a few at a time. And I knew what I was doing. Trying to step into my mother’s shoes is just so…difficult.”
God, could I relate to that. “Believe it or not, I get that, too. I stepped into my father’s shoes five years ago when he died unexpectedly from a heart attack. They were big shoes to fill, and I didn’t feel like I was ready. It’s going to take some time for you to feel comfortable. Why did you leave corporate law?”
Nicole was obviously intelligent and highly educated. She’d just stepped into a world she knew nothing about after her mother’s death. I had to respect the balls it took to take that leap. Dylan and I had had the benefit of being groomed to step into my father’s shoes one day.
I had to admire this woman’s strength and determination. She’d dropped everything in a world where she was comfortable to enter an entirely different universe. My question would be…was she happy where she was right now?
She started to speak before I could ask. “I suppose I just didn’t want to let go of ACM because it was so successful, and I was there to see her fight for that success. I wanted to keep it going because she…couldn’t. I couldn’t sell something that was that important to her.”
Nicole had wanted to keep some part of her mother alive, even after her parent was gone. I understood that. “Did she ask you to do it?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. She knew I was happy as a corporate attorney. My mother wasn’t like that. All she ever wanted was for me to be happy. She expected me to sell, but I couldn’t do it. So I moved from New York back to California permanently after she died to see if I could make a go at ACM.”
I really fucking hated the crushed look on her face. I wanted to say the right words to make it go away, but I wasn’t Dylan. The right words weren’t always there for me, and I wasn’t really good at blowing sunshine up anyone’s ass, but in Nicole’s case, I wanted to try. “It’s just one botched presentation. You’ll get another chance.”
What I definitely couldn’t tell Nicole was that I should have been at her presentation. The meeting had been on my schedule. I’d had to bail out of that commitment because I’d wanted to drive to Surrey to see Mum after I’d seen the tabloids with Dylan’s bare-naked ass exposed to the entire country.
Nicole’s voice sounded desperate as she told me, “You don’t understand, Damian. It wasn’t about getting another deal. It was about accomplishing something my mom always wanted. I got the opportunity that she didn’t, and I fucked it up.”
Ahhh…so it wasn’t about the money for her at all. It wasn’t financial; it was personal.
I hated the fact that I hadn’t been at that meeting, and she’d left Lancaster International headquarters feeling like she’d failed.
For some strange reason, I wanted to reach out my hand and turn her face to me so I could see her expression, but I didn’t.
Number one…I wasn’t sure that seeing an injured look in her gorgeous blue eyes wouldn’t be akin to a swift kick in the gut for me.
And number two…I didn’t want to invade her space again. Okay, maybe I did want to invade her space, but I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. I’d probably already done enough to make her wary, and the last thing I wanted to do was shut her down for the rest of the flight.
I wanted her to keep talking to me, which meant I needed to stop doing impulsive shit that was so contrary to my normal personality.
Hell, just wanting somebody to talk to me was highly abnormal.
What in the fuck can I do to make her understand that what happened at Lancaster isn’t the end of the world?
Maybe she just needed some kind of…do-over. “Then tell me right now, Nicole. Tell me what you could have done for Lancaster. What would you say if you got the chance to do that meeting all over again?”
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “I’d tell them that what the CEO is doing will probably catch up with them if they don’t try to fix this right now, and put a kibosh on anything else similar happening in the future. I’d say that they’ll eventually see a decrease in their business if it continues because people don’t always buy with their wallets. Sometimes, they buy with their instincts and their heart. At some point, if the owner of the corporation doesn’t stop the bullshit, Lancaster is going to become a company with an ‘ick factor.’ Some people will be turned off, and buy the product right next to their product, one that doesn’t sport the Lancaster name.”